[Froufrou]

Not so fast. It sounds as if they were asked to have their meetings in a room and refused to do it. The school has a right to say where they can meet.

[MortMan]

To be completely correct, they were asked to use a "closed" room. The closing of the room likely is part of the issue, as well.

[longtermmemmory]

There is case law which states student groups are allowed to have student lead prayers in the public areas.

The students in the case were meeting at the flag pole to pray.

If they were blocking the hall then they have a problem, however if they were meeting in a commons area where OTHER student groups are allowed to meet in the same manner then the school's case is DOA.

[RockinRight]

The headline makes it look as if the prayer was the issue - it wasn't. There are enough LEGITIMATE cases of schools and other public organizations showing an anti-Christian bias to not have to make something out of a case that's not rooted in that.

[TheBattman]

Actually, they were denied ANY meeting location on campus. In this case, the students (who are allowed in the cafeteria before school anyway) decided to sit together and pray - I guess that was offensive to the Satanist student who turned them in...

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Students at one Washington State public school suspended for praying
Allie Martin OneNewsNow.comMarch 7, 2007
http://www.onenewsnow.com/2007/03/students_at_one_washington_sta.php

Mathew D. Staver, founder of the pro-family legal group Liberty Counsel, says a lawsuit is possible against officials at a Washington State high school that suspended 12 Russian immigrant students because they gathered to pray before school.

Several weeks ago, administrators at Heritage High School in Vancouver, Washington, denied a request from Christian students to start a prayer club. The students, who were not allowed to meet for prayer in a private room, instead gathered before school in the cafeteria to pray; however, they were reported by a student who claims to be a Satanist.

The school's vice principal then told the Christian students they could not pray in the cafeteria and would have to go outside. The Christian students refused and were suspended, some for three days and others for ten days. Staver says the students' constitutional rights were violated.

"It's absolutely outrageous that the school allowed one Satanist student to exercise a heckler's veto over the other students' speech," the Liberty Counsel spokesman observes. "The situation underscores the ignorance of the school officials, and what Liberty Counsel has now done is issued a demand letter, demanding immediate action by the school to allow these students to be reinstated."

Staver notes that most of the students suspended were Russian immigrants who "came to America assuming that America was the land of the free and the home of the brave -- assuming that they would have religious liberty." But instead they were greeted "with religious persecution and discrimination; and so this situation needs to be remedied immediately," he asserts.

Liberty Counsel is providing legal assistance to the students who were suspended. Staver says a lawsuit will be filed this week if school officials do not reverse their decision.